Monday, June 25, 2007

Emo Outreach Project Launches + Reading + Today in History

Finally, after many months (of delays), I've been able to launch the "Emotional Outreach Project, v. 3.0" under the auspices of the Field Study Research Group A. All of the people who've signed up and given the name of a designee should receive their packets (an example at right) within the next week.

There are a few openings left, so if any J's Theater readers would like to participate, please send an email to Field Study Research Group A (or fieldstudyresearchgroup[AT SIGN]yahoo.com, and I will try to get the packet to you very soon. I'll be starting a different blog for other Field Study Research Group A projects, and will post on that when it's up and running.

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I wrote to a friend recently that in addition to getting some writing done, I've been able to hit the books for my own purposes. A few of the books I've finished so far include Alain Mabanckou's African Psycho (in English translation, not the French original), Anne Carson's Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides (her translation, each with an introductory essay, of Herakles, Hekabe, Hippolytis, and Alkestis), Jay Wright's Music's Mask and Measure, Christopher Isherwood's Prater Violet, Twain's Huckleberry Finn (for a particular project), Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass (I'm partway through The Subtle Knife, and C gave me the third volume in the trilogy for my birthday), and, after years of having only read selected essays by Benedict Anderson, I've finally finished his Imagined Communities. The university library is already requesting several books back, so I'm going to need to begin visiting the New York Public Library's Main Research and Schomburg branches again, and do so early enough to get a seat in the reading room. What are you reading these days?

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An auspicious day, June 25. On this day in 1876, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his forces lost the the Battle of Little Bighorn in Montana to Sioux and Cheyanne Indians, paying literally with their lives; in 1951, Communist North Korean troops invaded South Korea, initiating the Korean War, which has never been officially ended; and in 1991, the nations of Croatia and Slovenia proclaimed their independence from Yugoslavia, beginning a civil war whose ripple effects continue today. On the brighter side, in 1788 Virginia, the home of four of the first five presidents, joined the new United States, and the first color TV transmissions from New York to several other major cities occurred in 1951. It's also Reggie H.'s and Carlos Delgado's (at right, photo courtesy of Reggie) birthdays! (H/T to Infoplease's Today in History.)

1 comment:

As per your suggestion I finished "Blood Meridian" a few weeks ago. Ravishing! I wanted to start over and read it all over again when I finished, but I forced myself on to the next book: "When Baghdad ruled the Muslim World" (for a project). Because I must, at all times, have some fiction, I am somewhat predictably reading "The Savage Detectives." It's compulsively readable, and I'm astonished how good the translation is (idiomatic conversation, plausible slang, etc). I think I'll read Suttree, next; a perfect stranger approached me in a restaurant when I was reading Blood Meridian and swore that should be my next choice "as good as Grapes of Wrath!" he said...